The repercussions of ecological meltdown will be felt not just by polar
bears and tribes living on islands. It will change the way we live --
and whether we live -- in ways that we cannot hope to foresee.

At work here is a set of global forces that the US, in its hubris,
believed it could tame and dominate in its own cynical interests. By the
early 1990s that arrogance manifested itself in the claim of the "end
of history": the world's problems were about to be solved by
US-sponsored corporate capitalism.

The new Wikileaks disclosures will help to dent those assumptions. If a
small group of activists can embarrass the most powerful nation on
earth, the world's finite resources and its laws of nature promise a
much harsher lesson.

Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. He is the 2011 winner of the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His latest books are "Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East" (Pluto Press) and "Disappearing Palestine: (more...)